Historical Guise Dancing and Its Music in Cornwall, 1750–1950

Part 1: Historical Guise Dancing

This exploration of historical guise dancing began from a desire to understand the origins of a beloved winter tradition. Both of us participate in house-to-house guise dancing during the twelve days of Christmas and at the modern Montol festival.

Familiar with the remarkable accounts by William Bottrell and Robert Hunt, later expanded by Morton Nance and Hamilton-Jenkin, we sensed that the reality of historical guise dancing existed somewhere between imagination and documented fact.

Today's discussion concentrates on the history of guise dancing from roughly 1750 to 1950. What exactly was it? Where did it take place? Who participated, and what music accompanied it?

These questions are not new. A letter from a writer calling themselves "Amicus Cornubiensis" appeared in the Royal Cornwall Gazette on 14 January 1804:

"Sir, It is the wish of several of your subscribers, that you would favour them, in an appendix to the poetry in your Gazette of 24th December, with the best account you can collect of the origin and particulars of the ancient custom of Geese or Guize Dancing, with the ceremonial used on the occasion."

The response provided a detailed description of medieval mumming and linked it to Christmas plays. Even in 1804, guise dancing was already considered "ancient."

Exploring newspaper archives revealed a wealth of information. These sources are not only valuable for academic study but also serve as inspiration for keeping these traditions alive today.

A small grant from the 'Q' Fund enabled us to uncover over one hundred descriptions of guise dancing in Penzance, Newlyn, Paul, Madron, St Just, St Ives, Gulval, Goldsithney, Helston, and the Isles of Scilly.

General observations and definition

The firsthand accounts we discovered indicate that guise dancing meant different things to different people during this period. However, the general practice was to go out after dark during the twelve days of Christmas in some sort of disguise — comical, fantastical, or cross-dressed — and call on neighbours, visit local pubs, and process through the streets to play music, dance, perform short plays, drink, speak freely, and create mischief. Evidence survives of role-playing games, mock funerals, processions, and identity-guessing games. The activities aimed to be loud, vibrant, boisterous, sometimes frightening, and above all, fun — entertainment during the darkest time of the year.

First mentions

The earliest mention of the term "guise dancing" appears in 1750, in Robert Heath's book A Natural and Historical Account of the Islands of Scilly (pp125-126). Heath tells us that on the Isles of Scilly, the guise dancers began their festivities on Christmas Day.

At Christmas Time, the young People exercise a Sort of Gallantry among them called Goose-dancing; when the Maidens are dressed up for young Men, and the young Men for Maidens. They visit their Neighbours in Companies, where they dance, and make their Jokes upon what has happened in the Islands, when every Person is humorously told of their own without Offence being taken. By this sort of Sport according to yearly Custom and Toleration, there is a Spirit of Wit and Drollery kept up among the People. The Maidens, who are sometimes dressed up as Sea-Captains and other Officers, display their alluring Graces to the Ladies, who are young Men equipped for that Purpose; and the Ladies exert their Talents to them in courtly and amorous Addresses: Their Hangers are sometimes drawn, &c. after which, and other pieces of Drollery, the Scene shifts to Music and Dancing; which being over they are treated with Liquor, and then go to the next House of Entertainment.

That sounds like a memorable evening.

William Borlase describes guise dancing — without naming it — in his 1758 book The Natural History of Cornwall (p299), dismissing some aspects as "peurile."

Some faint remains of the same custom I have often seen in the west of Cornwall during the Christmas season, when at the family-feasts of gentlemen, the Christmas Plays were admitted, and some of the most learned among the vulgar (after leave obtained) entered in disguise, and before the gentry, who were properly seated, personated characters, and carryed on miserable dialogues on Scripture subjects ; when their memory could go no farther, they filled up the rest of the entertainment with more puerile representations, the combats of puppets, the final victory of the hero of the dramas, and the death of his antagonist.

A published transcription of the Journal of Rear-Admiral Bartholomew James proved a fortunate discovery. The entry for January 1771 records guise dancing aboard a ship anchored off the Cornish coast, with crew members vying to outdo each other in the absurdity of their costumes. The entry concludes with this recollection:

I remember often to have seen the performers of a geese dance obliged to make a precipitate retreat from some houses where the family have not relished the custom, and upset each other as they are flying perhaps from some violent housekeeper with a hot poker.

The term "guise dancing"

A comment on terminology is useful here. In the newspaper accounts we found, the terms "guise dancing" or "goose dancing" appear most frequently.

Only two instances of the shortened form "guisers" emerged — this term is more commonly applied to similar traditions in northern England and the Scottish borders, known as guizards. In both Cornish cases, the journalist used the term alongside "guise dancers."

Geography

The geographic range of the term "guise dancing" extends no further east than Helford and Helston, and covers all of West Penwith and the Isles of Scilly to the west. St Ives holds the strongest association, followed by Penzance. Thomas Couch's description of guise dancing in Polperro remains unconvincing, though that is a matter for another occasion — or questions at the end.

While other mumming activities and play performances are described in places like Truro and Padstow, the newspapers themselves never use the term "guise dancing" for mid, north, or east Cornwall. This holds true for descriptions of Cornish guise dancing in non-Cornish newspapers such as the Pall Mall Gazette and Oxford Times. So even if similar activities occurred elsewhere in Cornwall at the same time of year, no one outside west Cornwall called themselves guise dancers, and the customs there were not referred to by that name.

Christmas plays

As part of their 'gambols' during the Twelve Days of Christmas, guise dancers often performed short plays. The St George play was the most popular. By the 1790s, the play had become such a significant part of guise dancing that it nearly came to define it.

Robert Hunt, writing in his 1865 Popular Romances of the West of England, states that the term "geese dancing" was "applied to the Christmas plays, and indeed to any kind of sport, in which characters were assumed by the performers or disguises worn" (p.308). William Bottrell, in 1873, said of the play Duffy and the Devil, "this droll formed the subject of an old Guise-dance (Christmas Play)" (Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall Vol 2, p.1).

It is understandable that some writers view the performance of a Christmas play as evidence of guise dancing. However, we regard the Christmas play as an optional element of guise dancing, not a defining characteristic.

Fictions

Some descriptions of guise dancing once believed to be factual — such as the comparison between guise dancing in Penzance and Carnival in Venice — are actually fictional stories. Even so, those descriptions did not emerge from nothing.

One frequently cited example comes from A. K. Hamilton Jenkin's book Cornwall and its People, where he says that a "writer describing guise dancing at Penzance in 1831 likened it to an Italian carnival" and then quotes a rich description of the town at that time. Frustratingly, he provides no reference for the quote, despite citing Heath and Bottrell on the same page.

We traced the supposed "1831" quote to an annual publication of amusing tales called The Olio, or Museum of Entertainment. The Italian carnival reference appears in a story by "J. H." titled Reuben Remplace — a swashbuckling tale of a reformed smuggler living in Newlyn. While the story is fictional, it must have been written by someone with solid knowledge of guise dancing and the Penzance area, so it may contain a kernel of truth. Interestingly, the editor of The Olio, Edward Augustus Kendall FSA, may have known William Sandys FSA, both based in London in the 1830s and both Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries. This connection requires further investigation.

Not always welcome

Some newspaper reports reveal that guise dancing was considered antisocial behaviour by parts of the community. In St Ives and Penzance, efforts emerged to ban it altogether — these towns became battlegrounds for tensions between guise dancers and the authorities.

In the 1860s, the St Ives correspondent for the Cornish Telegraph (reprinted in Hunt's Popular Romances, p395) warned that it was "dangerous for children, and aged or infirm persons, to venture out after dark, as the roughs generally are armed with a sweeping-rush or shillalagh. The uproar at times is so tremendous as to be only equalled in a 'rale Irish row'."

A report in the Royal Cornwall Gazette, Thursday 31 December 1891, noted:

Then there are the "guise-dancers" or "geese-dancers," as they are sometimes called: unruly and turbulent merry-makers these, whose performances have been put down by law in large towns but who caper and dance and hold carnival from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Night in villages and country places. With them it is the fashion for men and maidens to wear each other's garments, or to disguise themselves by putting on hideous masks and strange attire. Taking advantage of this disguise, they are apt to behave in a way disconcerting to more sober people; and no one cares to be out alone after nightfall in places where the guise-dancers may be expected to appear.

A spirited letter from an angry resident of High Street in St Ives in 1898 (The Cornish Telegraph, Thursday 06 January 1898, p8 col2) describes guise dancing in full flow: "I heard of a case a few evenings ago where a little girl, who was being taken home by her brother (not much older than herself) was persistently followed by a boy with a blackened face, and the child was so frightened that she took refuge in a shop, and there she stayed for awhile crying and sobbing as if her heart would break." Happily, the writer also describes the musical instruments used by the guise dancers, which we will discuss later.

During our research, an elderly woman in Newlyn recalled being frightened as a young girl by guise dancers visiting her home.

Nor were guise dancers always the ones causing trouble. They seemed fair game themselves. In Lelant in 1903, it was reported:

The "Guise dancers and hunters" have been numerous in our midst during the week. The hoary old custom seems to have revived a little during the last few years. But, alas! its followers have fallen on bad times, at least some of them. I hear that some of our "Guisers" during the week, got roughly handled for being a bit too intrusive, and several rushed to their homes "guiseless," feeling a little sorer and warmer than when they sallied forth, believing after all that the days of guise-dancers are past. (The Cornish Telegraph, Wednesday 07 January 1903).

Costumes and props

On Scilly in the 18th century, a naval flavour marked some costumes, along with enthusiastic cross-dressing.

Let us return to Heath's valuable testimony from 1750 on costume:

The Custom of Goose-dancing was formerly encouraged by the Military Officers living in these Islands, who distinguished themselves by it among the Ladies. They used to go in party-coloured Dresses, half of one Colour to the Right and Left, or above and below; exercising drawn Swords in their Dancing at the Houses, where they entered and retired by Procession of two and two.

On board his naval vessel in 1771, Bartholomew James describes naval officers trying to outdo each other with the ridiculousness of their outfits, particularly mocking authority. Polwhele's 1797 poem The Old English Gentleman describes blackened faces — "a visage blacken'd o'er with cork" (p.120) — along with the flamboyant players of the Christmas play wearing tinsel, ribbons, and cock-plumes.

Some dressed to frighten audiences. Descriptions speak of costumes that were "grotesque" (Cornishman, Thursday 24 November 1904) and "hideous sights of the older times" (The Cornish Telegraph, Wednesday 09 January 1901, page 5, column 1). "The costumes ranged from the highly artistic to the ludicrous, some of the productions being fearfully and wonderfully made" (Cornubian and Redruth Times, Thursday 23 January 1908).

W. H. Hudson, in his 1908 book The Lands End, writes:

"But how strong the simple primitive love of fun is in the Cornish people may be seen at Christmas time in St Ives in their 'Guize-dancing,' when night after night a considerable portion of the inhabitants turned out in masks and any fantastic costume they can manufacture out of old garments and bright-coloured rags to parade the streets in groups and processions and to dance on the beach to some simple music till eleven o'clock or later. This goes on for a fortnight. Just think of it, men, women, and children in their masks and gaudy get-up, parading the little narrow, crooked, muddy streets, for long hours in all weathers! And they are Methodists, good, sober people who crowd into their numerous chapels on Sundays to sing hymns and listen to their preachers!" (The Lands End by W. H. Hudson, p176; also The Cornishman, Thursday 02 July 1908).

In St Ives also in 1908, "Men dressed like girls, and girls in Rimsy tarlatan and artificial flowers whirled arm-in-arm through the crowd, stopping now and then to accost some unhappy stranger with a jest, at which all would roar with laughter" (Oxford Times, Saturday 08 February 1908, page 10, column 2).

Richard Edmonds's description of Penzance guise dancing in 1846 (published in 1851) noted that the guise dancers "occasionally masked themselves with the head, horns, and skins of bullocks, a practice not yet entirely discontinued" (PZNHS, 1851, p80).

'Osses are popular today, especially the type featuring a skull on a pole, but we can find only one example of a horse representation associated with guise dancing.

This appears in William Sandys's description of a Penzance game called The Corn-market, which in context is linked to guise dancing. The man is called Old Penglaze and is accompanied by a person "girded round with a horse's hide, or what is supposed to be such, to serve as his horse" (Christmas Carols, p. cxiiii of preface).

It is the man, not the horse, who is called Penglaze. Richard Edmonds corroborates this, saying the horse was "represented by a man carrying a piece of wood in the form of a horse's head and neck, with some contrivance for opening and shutting the mouth with a loud snapping noise, the performer being so covered with a horse cloth or hide of a horse, as to resemble the animal, whose curvettings, biting, and other motions, he imitated" (PZNHA, Edmonds 1851: 80).

Part 2: The Music of Guise Dancing

Several newspaper accounts speak in general terms about music being played and songs massacred during guise dancing. Getting a more accurate picture of exactly what was sung, played, and danced to proves slightly more challenging.

Heath, 1750, also references song and music used in guise dance role playing:

There was a Serjeant Kite who acted his Part in Company, which was repeating Verses in Praise of a military Life, and laughing People out of their Money. At this Time Serenades in the Night were in Practice under the Windows of the fair Islanders, which at this Day are not quite forgot.

The respondent to "Amicus Cornubiensis" (the first newspaper enquiry about the history of guise dancing) quotes from Heath: "When the music and dancing is done, they are treated with liquor, and then they go to the next house of entertainment."

In total, we have approximately thirty brief references to guise dancing that focus on music in the newspaper accounts. The sources discuss the instruments in use, the dancing, the singing (both good and bad), and even music on the beach late at night.

Instruments, processions and bands

In January 1887, reports noted "Bands of young people, in fantastic costumes, have paraded for hours, the processions sometimes being headed by a musical instrument, and followed by crowds of boys and girls yelling and hooting in a disgraceful manner."

In St Ives, 1898, we get specific mention of actual instruments: "concertinas, tin pans, flutina and bones, 'May horns'" (note in Cornish Telegraph, Thursday 06 January 1898, page 8, column 2). The writer deliberately placed "musical" in inverted commas.

St Just 1891: "On Monday evening the town was paraded by several parties of 'guise-dancers' and the bands could be heard discoursing sweet music" (The Cornishman, Thursday 01 January 1891).

St Ives 1908: "Quite a new feature this year (or shall we say an old feature revived) was a band of over twenty performers. The 'music' was not of the highest order, but it was certainly very popular and attracted a large crowd of interested spectators" (Cornishman, Thursday 16 January 1908).

To the reporters' ears, at least, some guise dancers were notable for their questionable musical talent.

The Cornish Telegraph's St Ives correspondent from the early 1860s, reprinted in Robert Hunt's Popular Romances, says that "In many families, a crock of 'fish and tatees' is discussed in West-Cornwall style before the 'singers' commence their time-honoured carol, 'While Shepherds,' which is invariably sung to the 'same old tune,' struck by some novice in u flat."

That is quite a withering description. The correspondent uses quotation marks around 'singers' and describes the town as "literally given up to a lawless mob, who go about yelling and hooting in an unearthly manner, in a tone between a screech and a howl, so as to render their voices as undistinguishable as their buffoon-looking dresses."

Foreign influences on guise dancing music

Not all the tunes were connected to Christmas. Guise dancers adopted whatever music they liked, and this wasn't always as local as one might expect.

That was Angeline the Baker, a tune composed in New York in 1850. The Pall Mall Gazette reported hearing it played in St Ives. The visiting reporter was displeased that the magic of guise dancing had been hijacked by an imitation of American Minstrel bands touring Britain at the time.

It is a poor exchange to have got, instead of a play like this, with St George and Father Christmas, and the hobby horse and Mak the jester, and all the crew whom, in the northern midlands, they call “mummers,” a bad copy of negro entertainment; yet this is what the West Cornish guise-dancers have come to. “Get away, black man,” and “Ladies, won’t you marry?” and “Angelina Baker,” have superseded the Christmas “guise,” just as the preachings and revivals have taken the place of the mystery-plays like the strange story of St Merisek, lately translated by Mr. Whitely Stokes. (Pall Mall Gazette - May 26 1874, page 12, column 2)

The enduring tradition

Guise dancing is fundamentally about disguise, but music has always formed a substantial part of the entertainment. The tradition has never slipped out of living memory, likely going back to the Middle Ages. We have personally encountered recollections from people in Newlyn, Penzance, and St Ives who either remember it or participated as children—though just as many who grew up in the same areas insist they never did it, saw it, or heard of it.

Guise dancing has undoubtedly helped preserve folk music while also introducing new sounds to Cornwall—from mid‑19th‑century Old Time American classics to English tunes like Rogue's March brought in by the 1970s St Ives revivals. And we must mention the guise dancer's favourite, Turkey Rhubarb. This tune has become so deeply embedded in the Cornish canon and so associated with guise dancing that we sometimes forget it, along with its variants, is known by over 30 different names and appears in many other places and traditions. But Cornwall has made it our own, and that is what counts.

In 1934, BBC radio visited Landithy Hall in Madron to record a group called the Madron Guise Dancers for a programme called Cornish Conversation, broadcast in January 1935 and rebroadcast in 1937. The recordings are now believed lost, but the Western Morning News covered both events and photographed the dancers. We also have a radio interview with one of the original Madron guise dancers conducted by Ted Gundry in the late 1970s. This may be the Mrs Watts that Merv Davey met in 1980, but unfortunately Ted kept no records. To us, this interview encapsulates what guise dancing—ancient and modern—is truly about.